Wireless networks are constantly evolving and many networks now offer significantly increased bandwidth relative to prior generations of wireless networks. Thus, a number of mobile service providers now offer traditional media broadcast services, similar to those offered by cable or satellite television service providers. For example, 1× Evolution-Data Optimized (EVDO) networks employ a wireless radio broadband data standard that has been adopted by a number of CDMA mobile telephone service providers in several countries, including the United States. The EVDO standard has been adopted by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project 2 (3GPP2) collaboration, as part of the CDMA2000 family of standards. Similarly, the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is a competing standard that has been also been adopted by a number of mobile telephony service providers.
The wireless links in an EVDO network, for example, between the distributed base stations and the mobile terminals, provide sufficient bandwidth (for example, on the order of 50 Mbps) for such emerging media broadcast services. It is well known, however, that the “backhaul” portion of the EVDO networks that transports traffic between the distributed base station sites and the centralized portions of the EVDO network, such as the Radio Network Controller (RNC), is a bottleneck that currently does not provide sufficient bandwidth for such emerging media broadcast services. For example, in an EVDO network, the backhaul network is typically implemented using “Transmission Level 1” (T1) telecommunications lines, which typically support 24 calls of approximately 64 Kbps, for a total of 1.5 Mbps. Currently, mobile networks position multimedia content so that it must traverse the bandwidth-limited backhaul link. Thus, numerous T1 connections must be aggregated to support the evolving broadband media services.
In addition, unlike traditional networks, the user in a mobile architecture typically does not have a single point-of-contact with the network. Thus, the communication path to the user changes during the broadcast. On emerging wireless networks, the communication path from the network core to the user is expected to change frequently, for example, on the order of every few seconds, further complicating the ability to deliver broadband services to a mobile user.
A need therefore exists for methods and apparatus for wireless delivery of media content to a user in a wireless network without having to traverse the backhaul portion of the network. A further need exists for methods and apparatus for wireless delivery of media content to a user in a wireless network in such a way that the content is available along each user path.